


An Off-Key Tune

by Gallahad



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Oedon Chapel, choir member, don't wander too far in mensis, frenzy is dangerous kids, high insight hunter, mentions of gilbert and alfred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallahad/pseuds/Gallahad
Summary: Just a sweet, simple moment of peace between a tired Hunter and his Choir friend, in a world where serenity is a rare thing.There's a realization, and the fear of losing each other, but they try to forget it.





	An Off-Key Tune

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% self-indulgent bittersweet fluff, starring my own hunter and my friend's.
> 
> Altaïr is a kind scholar Hunter and medic with very high insight who struggles to save everyone, and has a hard time trying to cope with the Cosmic Truth.  
> Julian is a recluse member of the Choir hiding in the library of Oedon Chapel, who lost Gilbert to Beasthood, and his little brother to Mensis.
> 
> I'm in love with Bloodborne for quite some time now and I never thought that my first published fic on it would be about hunters ocs.
> 
> Thanks a bunch to [Leefye](https://twitter.com/LeefyeTime) for Julian, and as always to Kochei for the beta.

it is so quiet here.

The whole city is quiet - a dreadful silence as heavy as an iron shield, only perturbed by sudden cries for mercy and inhuman growls. From beasts to mysterious eldritch beings, and everything in between.

In the fog, Altaïr lets his heavy boots echo on the gray pavement, damp with a filthy dark blood that sticks to his soles. The squelching noise it makes isn't enough to cover the sound of his labored breath and the light splatter of his own blood dripping to the ground.

The trip back to the little chapel of Oedon from Mensis is hard and exhausting.

He survived. He has no idea how, or why, but he survived.

He felt the blood in his veins trying to lacerate him from the inside. He saw crimson spears tore his muscles, his skin, before breaking under their own weight, brittle and deadly.

Winter Lanterns were a scary thing.

Altaïr doesn't want to think about the dreadful feeling of nausea and madness that overtook him when those eyes were looking at him.

In a sudden access of pain, the hunter stops his difficult walk and lets himself slouch over a dirty wall, his only good hand releasing his injured arm to clutch at his head.

_Curses._

It hurts. Bad. His brain feels like a mess. He perceives the murmurs of the Great Truth invading his mind, gripping in the deepest parts, telling him he can never unsee, never forget everything he can now understand. It feels like claws that rampage his insides, and slimy appendices around his throat.

The city is quiet, yet he hears maddening voices and a haunting, off-key song that drips with sadness and longing.

  


—————

  


When Altaïr stumbles inside the modest library under the chapel, knocking a chair in the way, Julian's first reaction is to throw the heaviest book near his hand towards the stairs and the noisy intruder.

Luckily for the wounded hunter, he immediately refrains from doing so the second he realizes who said intruder is, and the state he's in.

For the faintest of moment, the Choir man feels his heart ache with a chilling fear.

  


—————

  


"I should be the one doing this." He is the medic after all.

But Julian wouldn't listen. After several minutes of alternating between silent horror and growing exasperation - _how come Altaïr would be so adamant against the idea of using blood vials?_ \- the book-lover simply made him sit and undress from his upper layers of clothes in order to check his wounds, seating sideways from him.

In the dim light of the candles, the tiny puddles of blood following Altaïr's tracks look like black ink, and his open shirt doesn't seem as white as it should be, caked with hemoglobin and sweat.

"In your state, you shouldn't be doing anything." Julian says with frustration and what the Scholar Hunter could swear is a low anger, barely hides on the surface.

It contradicts his touch, kind and cautious, as he carefully inspects the circular wounds on the other's arm and chest. They're ugly, and still dripping.

His hands are hot, and their paleness is a striking, fascinating contrast against Altaïr's darker skin.

"What in the moon could have inflicted you with such peculiar lacerations? I have never seen anything like it in any victims of the Hunt before."

Altaïr doesn't have the heart to answer. He's still feeling drowsy, still a little out of his own head. He doesn't wish to recall what he had just barely survived. But it's okay. He knows his friend can understand. In Yharnam, there's a lot of things you shouldn't talk about. A lot of questions you shouldn't ask.

It seems like Julian was talking to himself anyway. Muttering his observations, as if it could help processing the informations.

It turns out that the wounded hunter found himself quite found of this. Julian voice is soothing, and Altaïr realizes he feels a little better thanks to it.

His head is still killing him, and part of his mind is still lost somewhere deep within the reach of a knowledge that slowly drowns his sanity. But at least, hearing the rhythm of this voice helps him forget about the Winter Lantern's song.

  


—————

  


The Choir Hunter can see it. How exhausted his fellow scholar is.

He sees it in the way Altaïr lets himself slouch slightly on his chair and how often he closes his eyelids just long enough for it not to be simply blinking.

He sees it in the way his eyes look vaguely dazed and unfocused while Julian tends to his wounds.

He sees it in the way his friend looks like he died a hundred time in the course of a single night.

Oh, he's angry of course. At Altaïr, to be so foolish - _but he is simply doing what he's supposed too, so he knows it is unfair_ -, but also at himself, somehow, for allowing his mind to be so afraid for someone else's fate in this forsaken city. Gilbert and his own brother should have been a good warning, but apparently, it wasn't enough.

And as he relishes in the relieving sound of Altaïr's heavy breathing near him, he realize the anger is nothing to the fear of the empty space that would appears, should his dear friend were to really die out there.

His hands stops their ministrations for a second. The thought is sobering.

  


—————

  


The pearly white hands on his arm stops in their tracks, and Altaïr can sense them shaking ever so slightly.

 _There it is_ , he thinks. The moment where Julian is going to let his cold irritation do the talking. The moment where he's gonna ask with incomprehension why he would not consume blood vials - Altaïr couldn't explain his aversion to him. As well as he could never confess that, on several occasions, he went as far as letting himself die on purpose from the claws and fangs of some monsters, because he knew he was in a state who wouldn't allow him to continue without taking the cursed blood.

But the fit of indignation never comes. The hunter opens his eyes - _when had he closed them?_ \- and stares at the other man with a quizzical look.

He wants to open his mouth to ask what's wrong, but something in Julian's expression stops him in his tracks.

There's dread there. And an affection that makes his heart ache with longing.

Julian looks like he's all alone in this dark and dirty world, a sentiment Altaïr knows too well. The fingers of his good hand twitches. This face. This expression. It makes him want to touch the other. To pull him in an embrace.

It's not the first time Altaïr has this kind of want toward his friend - it's simply a natural need for human contact, he thinks, so he never worked on it, never entertained the thought seriously. Discarding it away as an unwanted complication. It's usually only a craving for the warmth of someone else against him, whoever it may be. But this time, he realize it's more serious than that.

He refrains from doing anything nonetheless, and looks at the ground in humility. Even if he was playing blind about it, it's not like Altaïr never noticed the occasional gazes the other man gave his way when he thought he wasn't looking. But a lot of complicated things happened between them, things that still hurt even after they talked about it.

"Are you-..." he begins.

"I have no interest in this Hunt you know," Julian interrupt as he stares at Altaïr's bandages, "aside from a mild scholastic curiosity, that is."

Altaïr nods slowly, saying nothing about the sudden change of topic. Of course, he knew that. For a member of the Choir, it wasn't that unusual. They were alway more interested in talking with the Great Ones than in the foul beasts rampaging the streets of their city. That, and the fact that Julian was the kind of person more suited behind a desk reading all day long than running away from an angry mob or a werewolf twice his size.

"But _i know_ that what you are facing out there isn't just mere beasts. That you see things i could not imagine - _i don't want_ to imagine, even in my worse nightmares."

Julian's touch on his friend's wrist slowly becomes a grip. It could have hurt, if Altaïr wasn't so focused on his pained expression instead.

"At first, I took you for another foolish Hunter. Another stranger invading the peace of this place and ready to die in a gutter. But now..." Ah. It's hard to concentrate. The skin against his feels more and more warm, and, frankly, it's almost disorienting. "I feel like each time you go out there, you're losing more of yourself. And I fear... That there will be a time when you'll never come back."

Julian's voice is so low that for an instant, Altaïr thinks he didn't hear right.

"I... Do not wish to lose you. Not like i lost Gilbert." Because he realizes he _cares_. He cares way too much. "Please. Do not stray too far from me. I..."

 _I need your presence, your touch,_ he wants to say, but stays silent instead. Since the beginning, there was a careful balance between the two of them, and Julian is under the impression that he just tipped one of the scales over.

The air is so still in the tiny library.

But the unsaid words doesn't get past the other scholar. And so, Altaïr doesn't know exactly why - maybe it's the last remnant of the frenzy he endured, maybe it's the way the light of the candle's flame dances on his dear friend's face - but in this moment, he caves in his want.

Slowly, so slowly, he raises his good hand to a strand of long, pale hair and tuck it behind its owner ear, before letting himself brush a cheek. His fingers - too callous for a scholar, hardened by countless hours of manipulating blunt and heavy weapons instead of his trusty pen - force with gentleness and care Julian to lift his face when he understand that the other man is avoiding looking at him on purpose.

He doesn't say anything, because he has nothing to say to begin with.

When he dips forward, he feels his breath mix with Julian's own. He doesn't dwell too much on the idea, because when their lips connect, he can't think of anything else.

The kiss is slow and kind. Hesitant at first when Julian doesn't react right away, then more assertive and languid when he perceives his partner gradually melting under his embrace and giving in.

For once, his mind is blank. All he can sense is the temperature of the body against his and the hand that went to grip his dirty shirt.

When they part - when Altaïr retreats - the hands doesn't move from their spots and their faces stay close.

It should feel wrong and awkward. They're friends, only friends, and in Yharnam the word doesn't even feel the same as anywhere else. A friend here could simply mean someone or something that, for once, isn't trying to kill you right off.

They're friends, not even close by usual friendship standards. And yet what's hang between them is so palpable, so intimate that Altaïr struggles to find his voice again.

It's weird how natural this feels.

  


—————

  


Julian pants softly after the separation, gasping lightly for air. He hates how he's incapable of thinking right now. He seems unable of neither talking or reacting.

He won't say he never thought about this, it would be lying - and he's anything but a liar - but having Altaïr, the _oh so_ secret and defensive hunter, opening himself like that to him and initiating this kind of contact... It was unexpected.

At this distance - so close, _so close_ \- he can smell the usual scent following Altaïr, of gunpowder, blood and medicine. But also the sweeter, faintest undertone of sweat and musk, of old books and ink. It shouldn't be that comfortable, but it is. He's tempted to bury his face in the crook of the tan neck in front of him, to relish the smell just a little more.

But before he makes up his mind, the other man in front of him pulls back, and the air become more breathable, but also awfully empty. It is then, when he sees the guilty expression in Altaïr's avoiding gaze, that he suddenly realize he didn't had a single reaction since the kiss broke.

"Ah... My apologies." And Altaïr indeed looks so apologetic it hurts. "I shouldn't have... I was under the impression that..." he stops, then tries again, "I'm not... thinking very well right now."

_Well, at least, that makes the both of us._

It's so strange, to hear the composed and collected scholar hesitate like that.

Julian can't bear it. He has to speak.

" _It's fine._ " It shouldn't. Because they both know things from the other that they better had to keep to themselves. Altaïr knows for Gilbert. Julian knows for that Executioner. They both saw the dark pit in which their respective death put them. It shouldn't be fine. It is not fine, and yet he wants it to be. "It wasn't... unwanted."

As he says this, he takes the hand Altaïr had retracted in his own. Even if he tries to show nothing of his embarrassment over the whole ordeal, keeping a straight face with success, he's relieved to see the guilt melt away from Altaïr's eyes.

"Is that so?" his friend answers, a low rumble in his voice as his face takes a sweet expression.

This tone. It sounds so affectionate and warm. It sends chills down Julian's spine. With someone like Altaïr talking to him like that, to hell with the Hunt, the Choir, Mensis, the Great Ones and everything else.

It makes him reaches for the other man's face when they both lean in unison to share a second, bolder kiss.

Over their shared impatience - he feels one of his partner's hand going to his hair, untying them to better run his fingers through it - he has the foolish wish that he would like the time to stop right there. Letting the both of them kissing feverishly, surrounded by books, dust and silence, unaware of the horrors from outside the chapel.

Maybe what they're doing is some kind of mutual comfort, after losing a person too precious to their heart.

Julian knows himself, he's aware that the idea will stick to his brain like a leech later. Uncomfortable and vile. But for now, he just wants to forget everything else and focus on the bandaged hand sneaking his way under his clothes. It leaves a hot trail on his chest, and he's only half-aware that Altaïr abandoned his lips to better kiss and lick at his jaw. His neck. His throat. Tasting him like he wants to commit the flavor of his skin to his memory.

Keeping some composure is hard, especially since he'd like to throw it out the window, for once in his life.

His own arms naturally finds Altaïr's shoulders, mindful of avoiding the wounds. His breathing is shallow and there is soft gasps every time Altaïr bites lightly into his pale skin.

Usually, Julian would be ashamed to let himself go in such manner in the presence of somebody else, but he tells himself that he doesn't really mind the other hunter hearing him like this.

It's only when he feels a hand fumbling with his pants that he slowly snap out of it.

_(He doesn't want to stop. He wants to let the other man go on. More than anything. But...)_

"Wait..." His voice is surprisingly raspy, like his own body forgot how to speak.

When Altaïr pulls back, eyes glazed and hair tousled, Julian is only inches away from pulling him back against him, to keep their warmth between them. Still, he resist the urge.

"This is not a good idea."

  


—————

  


The chill that ran thought Altaïr when he hears his friend's objection is enough to sober him almost instantly.

Of course. Looks like this frenzy affected him even more than what he thought, for him to abandon himself like that. He withdraws from Julian, and the sudden motion is hard on his wounds, making him flinch. It's almost as painful as the shame that starts to grow inside him.

"Forgive me. I shouldn't have gone this far..."

"That's not it." Julian interrupts him before he can go further. "I wouldn't mind continuing with... _This_. Believe me." He sputters.

Now that Altaïr can see him better, he takes in how his friend looks; disheveled, clothes wrinkled and crooked, gaze full of wants and unsaid things, and a light flush along his cheeks. He has never witnessed him in such state before, and thinking that it is his own doing feels foreign yet so normal.

"But?"

The Choir man takes several second before answering, just enough to straighten some of his clothes. Retrieving a semblance of composure. "But you are deeply wounded and you need rest."

It was so unexpected that Altaïr couldn't help but stare with incredulity. Before chuckling lightly behind his hand. A silent laugh shaking him from the inside, as he tries his best to keep some self-control.

"...Do not laugh. I refuse to bear the burden of your death should we... carry on in your state."

"The worse thing is, I can fully believe this would be your main concern, should we indeed take this further." There's a small smile on his lips, the first one since a while. It was so. _Julian_.

In all his usual coolness, Julian lets an indignant puff of air out of his mouth, and Altaïr can't repress another smile at how endearing it sounds.

"You still have your hideout somewhere in Central Yharnam, have you not?" Altaïr nods. He has told his friend about it, once or twice, even though Julian never saw it himself. "Then go there, take one of your sedatives and rest for a while. You will hunt no beasts looking like you fell into a pit of giant snakes."

Yes. Now that the moment passed, everything is back in his head. Mensis, the Winter Lanterns, the disgusting poison swamp.

The Great Amygdala waiting for him at the end of it.

He is a Hunter after all. He'll hunt, kill and be killed. Again and again. This fleeting moment with Julian in the chapel was nothing but a short reprieve.

With a sigh and a sad smile, he stands up - a little too fast for his injured body, and he sways a little before hanging on the table.

"You're right." As he's getting dressed, he's thinking about how to reach his hideout without crossing the path of too much monsters. Even via the safest route, he'll have to fight at least some of them. But no way he's admitting that to Julian. "Thank you for helping with the medical care. I feel better."

A shadow passes over the other scholar's face. He probably knows that Altaïr is only pretending to be fine.

As he sheathes his saw cleaver - caked with dried blood and way heavier than he remembered - Altaïr slightly leans toward Julian, unable to leave without a last banter as reassurance: "Maybe next time I should show it to you? The hideout. It's way more comfortable than the chairs of the library." he murmurs low in Julian's ear, heavy with undertone and promises.

He knows it has the wanted effect when the other lets out a frustrated sigh as a pink flush colors his face.

What he hadn't anticipated is Julian turning toward him before he has the time to straighten up, planting a quick, chaste kiss on his lips.

"Go now. And be careful out there."

Altaïr doesn't answer. There is no need. He nods, gives a last look to his dear friend, and braces himself before going down the ladder leading to Central Yharnam and the heavy, suffocating smoke coming from the burning corpses.

 

 


End file.
